Actor Simon Pegg is a hilarious guy (see: Hot Fuzz, Spaced, etc.), and reputedly How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is a pretty funny book. What to blame, then, for this utterly lackluster film adaptation of Toby Young's 2002 memoir? There are so many variables: toothless writing, a ramshackle plot, and the cinematic vacuum that is Kirsten Dunst, who relentlessly sucks the vitality and humor out of every scene she's in. No matter where you place the blame, though, the film is utterly underwhelming, another should-be-good turn from a British comedian who's apparently just not as funny on this side of the pond.

Pegg plays Sidney Young, a British writer who gets a job in New York City working for Sharpes magazine (a fictionalized version of Vanity Fair). He enters his new job determined to shake things up, to infuse the celebrity-obsessed culture of the magazine with his own unique comedic sensibility. Instead, he manages to offend and/or disgust everyone he meets with his social ineptitude and general crudeness. Soon he sells out his ideals for quick success and a chance to sleep with a coked-up starlet (bombshell Megan Fox)—until he inevitably sees the error of his ways, Dunst Hoovers in as a love interest, and they all live insipidly ever after.